The present invention relates to sugar cane planting apparatus.
In the past, cane has been cut and stripped by hand before being fed manually as a long stick into a planting machine which is mounted on a tractor. The planting machine receives the cane and chops it into short billets which are then laid in a trench and covered by earth as the tractor moves across a previously ploughed field. It will be apparent that this planting operation is relatively slow, requires a large amount of manpower and is accordingly extremely expensive. These problems have long to be recognised but the applicants are not aware of others offering an effective solution.
The present invention has the object of minimising labour needed to plant sugar cane and to provide for accurate and efficient planting to occur so that acceptable yields will result.
It is known to harvest sugar cane using harvesting machines which chop the sugar cane into so-called "billets" which typically may be 40 cm. long. After harvesting the cane is then processed, although it is necessary to remove any superfluous exterior vegetable matter associated with the cane before processing.
The present invention is particularly concerned with apparatus designed to use sugar cane billets which for the purpose of planting rather than processing will be green cane, i.e. cut before any of the superfluous matter, known as trash, is burnt off or otherwise removed. Typically each billet will have two or three "eyes" which will be the point from which new shoots will originate when the billet is planted. The shoots will then emerge from the soil and grow to form sugar cane for the next harvest.